Michael kept the cap pulled low and stumbled past the parcel-laden shoppers. A tipsy laborer, even during the day, was sure to be an uneventful occurrence in a small, rural town, especially one as small and rural as this. The disparate buildings looked so inconsequential in comparison to the miles of verdant hills that surrounded them, it was almost as if the town might be swallowed up by nature and disappear completely at any moment.
He was supposed to be looking for the Leaping Stag, and he was but with only half his attention. The other half was struggling with the unexpected end to his brief time with Undine.
He realized the hands thrust deep in his pockets were curled into balls. Part of the reason why was an actor’s instinct, to summon the concentrated carefulness of a man trying to appear less drunk than he actually was, but part of it was an effort to preserve the sense of her touch.
Embarrassed, he stretched his fingers.
He hadn’t asked to be whisked three centuries back in time, and he’d certainly had no desire to be a private in Undine’s one-man army. He’d spent the last decade and a half bowing to Lady Velopar’s every wish. But he still felt as if the curtain here had come down too soon on the drama with Undine. He wasn’t exactly sure what the second or third act would have wrought, but he wished he’d have gotten a chance to at least page through the rest of the story.
A towering red-haired man leaned against the front of the whorehouse/tea shop, eyeing him. Michael made a small belch and passed.
“Hey,” the man said, and Michael kept up his lumbering pace, hoping the man was talking to someone else.
A green carriage with polished fittings and a pair of white horses barreled toward a large, muddy puddle near him, and Michael squeezed closer to the shop front, but he wasn’t able to evade the entire splash, and mud splattered his trousers and shirt.
Bloody bastard.
The bastard, it turned out, was Bridgewater. He leapt from the carriage in a state of some agitation. “Stay here,” he ordered his driver and footman. Michael stepped out of sight.
Bridgewater looked up and down the street. He took a step toward the whorehouse and hesitated. The lanky man was gone, which was good. Undine had said the bishop would wake tomorrow without remembering anything, so even if Bridgewater was heading there and found him, it shouldn’t be a risk for Undine. However, if Bridgewater found Undine there, that would be a different story.
But Bridgewater turned on his heel and headed in the opposite direction—directly toward Michael.
Michael knew from his training that people were not particularly observant. Ask five witnesses at a car accident what happened, and you’ll get five different stories. People were better with faces, but not faces they’d seen only once or twice, and especially not faces they were seeing in an entirely new context. The nurse who helped your mum in the hospital is a complete cipher to you when you run into her by the tomato bins in Sainsbury’s. The theory was your brain builds its understanding of a person over time. Nonetheless, Michael preferred not to test the theory’s validity. He did an about-face and found that the red-haired man had simply moved to the opposite side of the street. It dawned on him that the man was watching him watch Bridgewater. Michael began to walk faster.
There’s a certain snobbery one brings to matters of the past, he thought, a sense that everything one knows and understands is superior to the poor, benighted people of earlier times—not unlike visiting one’s cousin in Lower Pilsley. But Michael’s snobbery was quickly evaporating. Without Undine, he had no one to ensure he navigated the odd practices of 1706 correctly, and now men—large, angry men—appeared to be hunting him down. He had no idea what sort of law enforcement existed here. He imagined resolving conflict boiled down to whoever held the biggest weapon. He could wind up dead and thrown in some damp Coldstream ravine before Undine even had a chance to miss him.
Did she miss him? It was a thought he wished he had more time to explore, but Bridgewater was coming up behind him at a clip.
Michael braced himself but felt only the brush of the man’s frock coat as he hurried by. At this point, Michael knew he should exit quickly. He took one last look back on the off chance of seeing Undine again and ran directly into Bridgewater, who had reversed course.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” Michael said—in a perfect Scots accent—before tugging his cap and hurrying on.
“Wait!”
Michael sighed and stopped. There was no point in delaying the inevitable. “Aye?” He turned around.
“You dropped something.” Bridgewater snagged a flash of white off the ground, and Michael realized with a sickening lurch it was the handkerchief Undine had given him. He didn’t know which would be worse—to have to explain why Father Kent was in laborer’s clothes and talking in a Scots accent, or to be found in possession of the handkerchief belonging to Lord Bridgewater’s fiancée. Scratch that. He knew exactly which would be worse.
Michael waited, fists clenched, for the man to come to one realization or the other.
“That’s the trouble with a long summer,” Bridgewater said, gesturing absently with the handkerchief. “When it doesn’t rain, you have dust everywhere. But when it does and you drop something, especially something fine…” He shook his head sadly, looking down at the linen. “And yours is remarkably—”
“Verra kind of you, milord,” Michael said, snatching it away and stuffing it in his pocket. The man rubbed the corner of his mouth contemplatively, and Michael’s heart thrummed in his chest.
“You’re quite welcome,” Bridgewater said. He tipped his hat and sauntered away.
Michael was stunned. Even in his perhaps slightly overblown regard for his acting ability, he’d never imagined he’d be able to pass as an entirely different person to a man who had bared his heart to him only a few hours earlier. Then he realized his calculations had excluded one critical factor: Bridgewater was a member of a very privileged class and, as such, regarded the people below him in the social strata as nameless, faceless bits of everyday ephemera—life’s wallpaper, so to speak—and spared them about as much attention as one might the light switch in the loo or the disposable chopsticks at one’s favorite Chinese takeaway.
His attention was diverted by Undine, who emerged from a fabric shop, causing both him and Bridgewater to jerk to a stop. The red-haired man laughed out loud.
Slipping away would have been smart, but Michael was unable to convince his legs to remove him from what might be his last look at her. He knew she saw him even though she didn’t look his way. He could feel her not looking at him, in fact, which made him both a little happy and a little sad. It was as if they shared a secret no one else knew and yet they would never get a chance to take pleasure in their shared knowledge.
Undine smiled when she saw Bridgewater, and he hurried to her side. An intense conversation followed, with Bridgewater clearly communicating his concern about her disappearance and an unruffled Undine waving away his worry. If Bridgewater had raised his voice, Michael would have intervened, damp ravine or not, but the conversation was conducted with civility. He found himself a little disappointed, to be honest.
With a pang, Michael watched Bridgewater take Undine’s elbow and lead her toward his carriage. He helped her in, followed on her heels, and the carriage pulled away. To Michael, it was as if the sun had pulled down its shades and closed for the season. He watched until the carriage was nearly out of sight, absently stepping one way or another to stay out people’s way. And he would have stayed longer but a hand clapped him on the shoulder.
“Come,” the red-haired man said. “Let me buy you a wee dram. Ye look a bit dour.”